Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, an international political movement and ideology that supports a Homeland for the Jewish People in the land known as Israel or Palestine (in the dominant interpretations, based on the creation of a Jewish majority). Opposition to Zionism takes on a spectrum of religious, ethical, or political forms, including: opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, non-violent rejection of the Israeli right to govern other peoples in the region, support for Arab property rights, and/or violent rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form. The relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is debated.

History of anti-Zionism

Political Zionism has encountered opposition ever since it was first articulated in the 19th century, initially mostly from within the Jewish community. The First Zionist Congress of 1897, which was originally intended to take place in Munich, had to be moved to Basel following the hostile response of the Munich Jewish community. The first anti-Zionist demonstrations by Arabs occurred in March and April 1920, with the latter leading to the 1920 Palestine riots. Periods of violence increased in severity and consequence in the following years.

Jewish anti-Zionism

Political opposition

Prior to WWII

Liberal opposition

Prior to the Second World War many Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful and unrealistic movement. Many liberals during the European Enlightenment had argued that Jews should enjoy full equality only on the condition that they pledge their singular loyalty to their nation-state and entirely assimilate to the local national culture; they called for the "regeneration" of the Jewish people in exchange for rights. Those liberal Jews who accepted integration and/or assimilation principles saw Zionism as a threat to efforts to facilitate Jewish citizenship and equality within the European nation-state context.

One major worldview amongst Jewish communal leaders in the West, following Mendelssohnian teachings, was to stress Jewish loyalty to the nation-state wherever Jews lived and the idea that Jews were not an ethnic or national group, but merely a religious community, like any other - "Englishmen of Jewish faith", "Germans of Jewish faith" and so on. Examples of this worldview were the founders of the initially anti-Zionist American Jewish Committee, such as Louis Marshall and Jacob Schiff, and the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish Association and League of British Jews, such as Edwin Montagu and Lucien Wolf.

Socialist opposition

Many working class Jews in Europe and America supported socialist or communist political ideas, and took the view that the defeat of antisemitism and the winning of civic equality for Jews required participation in the common struggle against capitalism and oppressive regimes. The largest Jewish political organisation in Europe, the General Jewish Labor Union, also known as the Bund, opposed Zionism right up until the German invasion of Poland in 1939, calling instead for Jewish national cultural autonomy within a socialist state. Some European Jewish socialists rejected this latter view and became Socialist Zionists.

Meanwhile, many Middle Eastern Jewish Communists, particularly in Iraq, felt that Zionism would not only obstruct a common struggle for equality via asserting the primacy of ethnic affiliation above class affiliation, but would lead to the establishment of a separatist state privileging Jews at the expense of their fellow Arabs in Palestine.

Progressive opposition

Progressive critics of Zionism such as Simon Dubnow, David Frischman, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Simon Rawidowicz each argued against the Zionist movement for different reasons, but all warned against exclusive focus on Zionism as the solution for the Jewish people. In particular, the Folkists, led by prominent Russian intellectual Simon Dubnow, advocated cultural autonomy for Jews in the diaspora rather than territorial sovereignty.

Other opposition: the Territorialists

The Territorialists, a Jewish nationalist movement, broke with Zionism because they were willing to pursue Jewish nationhood anywhere, not just in Palestine.

Post-WWII and the creation of Israel

Attitudes changed following the war and the revelation of the Holocaust. Most Bund supporters had been exterminated, Jewish communal life was suppressed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union under Communism. Furthermore, after Israel was created, Jews from the Middle East and North Africa experienced an unprecedented backlash, and found themselves forced to emigrate en masse; the vast majority of Middle Eastern Jews went to Israel. As such, although Zionism was once a minority movement within the Jewish world and while many contemporary critics of Israeli policies and legal structures are Jewish, as a direct result of the lessons of the Holocaust, the repression of Jews under Communist rule, and the hostility experienced by Middle Eastern Jews in the period around 1948, Zionism has become the dominant mainstream movement for modern Jews involved in communal Jewish life.

The Holocaust altered the views of many who critiqued Zionism before 1948, including the British journalist Isaac Deutscher, a socialist and life-long atheist who nevertheless emphasised the importance of his Jewish heritage. Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, arguing for Israel's establishment as a "historic necessity" to provide a refuge for the surviving Jews of Europe.

Furthermore, over the years anti-Zionists who acknowledged the need for a Jewish refuge following the Holocaust, later reasserted their opposition to a Zionist state in the absence of the acknowledgement of Palestinian national claims. For instance, in the 1960s Deutscher renewed his criticism of Zionism, scrutinizing Israel for its failure to recognise the dispossession of the Palestinians; later, in similar fashion, anti-Zionist figures such as Norman Finkelstein would vehemently argue that the memory of the Holocaust has been exploited as an "ideological weapon" to rationalize Israeli actions against Palestinians.

As Deutscher's political shifts– from opposition to, to guarded support for, to criticism of, Israel– demonstrate, the essence of the definition of anti-Zionist and Zionist have morphed over time. Similarly, contemporary Jewish American linguist, Noam Chomsky, reports a change in the boundaries of what are considered Zionist and anti-Zionist views. In 1947, in his youth, Chomsky's support for a socialist binational state, in conjunction with his opposition to any semblance of a theocratic system of governance in Israel, was at the time considered well within the mainstream of secular Zionism; today, it lands him solidly in the anti-Zionist camp.

Religious opposition

Main article: Haredim and Zionism

See also: The Three Oaths

In the early history of Zionism many religious Jews opposed ideas of nationalism (Jewish or otherwise) which they regarded as a secular ideology. Key traditionalist opponents of Zionism included Isaac Breuer, Hillel Zeitlin, Aaron Shmuel Tamares, Hayyim, Elazar Shapiro (Muncatz), and Joel Teitelbaum, all waging ideological religious, as well as political, battles with Zionism each in their own way. The Baba Sali, called Rabbi Teitelbaum's VaYoel Moshe the "treatise of our generation".

Many Hassidic Jews in particular opposed any attempt to create a secular Jewish state, and some contemporary hassidic sects have remained steadfast in their anti-Zionism, notably the Satmar sect. The leader of the Satmar hasidic sect, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's book, VaYoel Moshe, published in 1958, expounds one Orthodox position on Zionism, based on a literal form of midrash (biblical interpretation). Citing to Tractate Kesubos 111a of the Talmud Teitelbaum states that God and the Jewish people exchanged three oaths at the time of the Jews' exile from ancient Israel:

• That the Jewish people would not ascend to the Holy Land as a group using force;
• That the Jewish people would not rebel against the governments of countries in which they lived;
• That the Jewish people would not, by their sins, prolong the coming of the Jewish Messiah.

The actual third oath as given in the Talmud is actually one binding on the nations of the world, calling on them not to oppress Jews "more than necessary." Orthodox Zionists sometimes cite the clear violation of this oath by the nations of the world as causing the others to be null; anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews often ignore this formulation in favor of listing the three oaths as delineated above.

Reconciliation with Zionism

In the 1920s, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook articulated a fusion of Modern Orthodox Judaism and Zionism that came to be known as Religious Zionism. Over time extreme ultra-Orthodox opposition to Zionism has declined for a variety of reasons, including the need for Israeli government support and protection and popular support for Zionism among the laity.

Before the Second World War, Agudat Israel, the political party of the strictly Orthodox, opposed Zionism. Today it is a primarily Israeli party and since the seventies it has participated in most of Israel's coalition governments. Agudat Israel still oppose nationalism, but have found ways of accommodating the Israeli state.

The Belzer, and Gerer Hasidim, among others, claim that involvement in Israeli politics is necessary in order to offer a religious viewpoint in the Israeli Knesset. Some Haredi figures have become Zionist in practise. The Lubavitcher Rebbe in particular voiced his vehement opposition to land concessions, based on the Code of Jewish Law, and encouraged his followers living in Israel to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. All Hasidic Jewish opponents to Zionism, including Rabbi Teitelbaum and Rabbi Shapira, do approve of Jews living in the Land of Israel. Their opposition is not to Jews living in the Land of Israel, but to the ideology of Zionism. Indeed, there are many Hasidim and yeshivos of both Munkacz, Satmar and many other strongly anti-Zionist groups in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem.

A point of view overlooked in this debate is that of the Sephardim. No significant Sephardi Rabbi had a theological problem with Zionism and many spiritual leaders supported it. Some interpret the lack of religious anti-Zionism beyond the Ashkenazi world as an indication that religious anti-Zionism is a reflection of psychological and social, rather than theological, opposition.

Jews Against Zionism

For the book of this title, see Jews Against Zionism (book).

Further information: Satmar (Hasidic dynasty) and anti-Zionism within the Satmar and distinguishing factors from Neturei Karta

Several religious groups are identified by the title "Jews Against Zionism", including the groups more properly titled "True Torah Jews Against Zionism" and "Jews United Against Zionism", a subsection of the Haredi Jewish organization Neturei Karta. In addition to these religious organizations, a secular London-based group also claims the name. True Torah Jews Against Zionism is a religious-political movement and non-profit organization that was founded in 2001 in Brooklyn, New York by several members of the Satmar Chassidic sect. The organization operates by media outreach (including advertisements and radio as well as the publication of books Efes Biltecha Goaleinu in Hebrew and In the Footsteps of the Flock in English) and maintains an active website.

Arab anti-Zionism

See also: Palestinian nationalism

At the time when the Zionist settlement of Palestine began, most of the Arab world was under the control of either the Ottoman Empire or one of the European colonial powers.

Towards the beginning of Zionist settlement in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some Arabs were willing to consider alliance with the Zionist movement. For instance, Emir Faisal, the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who helped lead the Arab nationalist revolt against the Ottomans, signed the following agreement with Chaim Weizmann at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference:

Mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.

This agreement also called for the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and supported all necessary measures:

to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.

For a number of reasons, the agreement was never realized. For one, Faisal had conditioned his acceptance of the Balfour Declaration on the fulfillment of British promises of independence to the Arab nations, which were not kept. Moreover, he had little local support for his position. Arab Palestinian leaders, among them the mayor of Jerusalem, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, rejected this agreement made in their name. The Arab inhabitants of Palestine also rejected any suggestion of Palestine being severed from the Arab-Islamic world. While a Jewish minority had lived in Palestine for centuries, the Arab Palestinians were strongly opposed to the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish immigrant state, and hence to any immigration that would threaten to change the majority status of the Arab population. Thus, while small-scale Jewish immigration (such as the First Aliyah of the 1880s) was accepted and often welcomed for economic reasons, larger influxes of Jews were resisted strenuously.

Once the Balfour Declaration made it clear that the British intended to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, Arab opposition grew much firmer. Hostilities punctuated the 1920s (Jerusalem riots of April, 1920, 1929 Palestine riots (in Hebron, Jerusalem and Safed) and 1930s (activities of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and the Black Hand group, 1936-1939 Great Uprising).

File:Al-Farida, Lebanon pre-1967 war.jpg

Nasser (Egypt), backed by Arab states, kicks Israel into the Gulf of Aqaba. Pre-1967 War cartoon. Al-Jarida newspaper, Lebanon (Oren, 2002)

Anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist narratives—particularly popular in Arab countries with violent experiences of colonial rule—focus especially on parallels with cases such as Algeria or Rhodesia, seeing it in terms of a foreign power encouraging immigration into the country of a group which then sought to dominate the country. According to this view, the natural means of combating Zionism is considered to be Palestinian revolution, and the expulsion or weakening of the Zionist "occupiers". Among Palestinians, examples of notable individuals or political parties that emphasize anti-imperial and anti-colonial narratives in their opposition to Zionism include: Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Leila Khaled, George Habash, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and The Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party. Examples of Palestinian solidarity groups that root their activism against Zionism in anti-imperial and anti-colonial terms include: Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda [3], and Sumoud [4]. Critics of these movements argue that it is a red herring to compare Zionism to imperialism or colonialism, as Zionist ideology is focused on return to an ancestral homeland, rather than an attempt to exploit Arab Palestinians and that many Zionists are Arab Jews.

Pan-Arabist narratives—which enjoyed their heyday in the 1960s in the Nasser era, but have declined since—emphasize the idea of Palestine as a part of the Arab world taken by others (partly overlapping with the previous.) As such, Israel is seen as both a symbol of Arab weakness and—insofar as it geographically cuts the Arab world into two noncontiguous halves—an obstacle to any union of the Arab world. In this narrative, the natural means of combating Zionism is Arab nations uniting and attacking Israel militarily. Pan-Syrian narratives, promoted mainly by Syria, are essentially parallel.

In response to the Pan-Arabist narrative, Israeli historian Benny Morris commented:

Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.

Local nationalist narratives of non-Palestinian Arabs emphasize the idea of Israel as a threat to the nation (commonly citing extremist Israeli individuals' dreams of a nation stretching "from the Nile to the Euphrates"). Among Palestinians, these emphasize other issues, such as the Palestinian refugee problem, and that in their view, over 90% of the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine is controlled by Israel.

Map of British Palestine and Trans-Jordan

Israel on the other hand claims that it controls only 23% of the original mandate, with the rest under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which already has a majority Palestinian Arab population.

A poll of Arab-Israelis conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute in 2007 found that 75% of Arab-Israelis support the existence of a Jewish state:

A vast majority of Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities. Among the 507 people who participated in the poll, some 75 percent said they would agree with such a definition while 23 percent said they would oppose it.

Muslim anti-Zionism

File:Islam problem israel.jpg

Front cover of Islam and the Problem of Israel (1980)

Muslim anti-Zionism generally opposes the state of Israel as an intrusion into what many Muslims consider to be Dar al-Islam, a domain rightfully, and permanently, ruled only by Muslims. Once Islamic rule is established in a country, non-Muslims are given dhimmi status as protected from violence. Thus any sovereign, non-Muslim government in what is now Israel would be anathema.

Palestinian and other Muslim groups, as well as the government of Iran (since 1979 Islamic Revolution), insist that the State of Israel is illegitimate and refuse to refer to it as "Israel", instead using the locution "the Zionist entity" (see Iran-Israel relations). In an interview with Time Magazine in December 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments" [5].

An example of this view is the work of Ismail al-Faruqi (1926-1986). In Islam and the Problem of Israel (1980), he argued that Zionism was a "disease" largely influenced by European romanticism far removed from Judaism. He opposed the Zionist occupation of Palestine and called for the dismantling of Israel and the launch of a jihad. He said that the injustice caused by Zionism is such as to necessitate war. From the standpoint of Islam, Faruqi wrote, Zionism represents apostasy against Judaism.

Western anti-Zionism

In the liberal Western world, opposition to Zionism has often focused on the United Kingdom since it was the UK's decision to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The decision was controversial from the start as some British people believed the Balfour declaration undermined Britain's relationship with Muslims in the Middle East and India. Between 1919 and 1939 the British government steadily reduced its support for Zionism. In 1939 Britain formally announced its intention to create an Arab state in the whole of Palestine, ending its support for the Balfour declaration.

There was little opposition to Zionism in other countries but as Arab states became independent the desire to maintain positive relations with Arab states has often affected attitudes to Zionism.

Although supporting the creation of Israel, from 1949 onwards Communist countries adopted increasingly anti-Zionist and antisemitic positions and this affected attitudes of Communists in the West. The increasing popularity of a world-view emphasizing a global class struggle in which the Third World proletariat fought western exploiters placed the Palestinians as a focal point in global relations. In this "Third Worldist" worldview, Israel was generally described as a tool of western imperialism and a colonial settler state.

The growing conflict between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and between Palestinian liberation movements and the state of Israel has also generated an increase in anti-Zionism in the West.

Soviet anti-Zionism

Main articles: Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli conflict and History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Zionism was viewed in the Soviet Union as a form of bourgeois nationalism, and its active promotion among Jews was discouraged and eventually banned. From 1919 through most of Joseph Stalin's rule, the Tsarist government's anti-Jewish policies of the previous century were reverted and actively denounced. The rise of various forms of Jewish nationalism prompted the government in 1928 to establish and promote a "Soviet Zion" in Birobidzhan, a project that failed to meet population goals and was soon abandoned.

Throughout this, the official position of the Soviet Union and of its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism." The meaning of the term Zionism was misrepresented to conform to a policy of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism,... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR."

During the years of Joseph Stalin's rule Soviet Jews were frequently attacked as "Zionists," although the majority of Soviet Jews at that time did not hold strong Zionist convictions. After the creation of Israel, however, many Soviet Jews began to sympathise with the Jewish state, thus arousing further antagonism from the Soviet government, which saw Zionism as a potential source of disloyalty.

However, from late 1944 through 1948, the Soviet Union's stance toward Zionism was strongly influenced by geopolitical concerns, and the government officially supported the foundation of Israel , although this was hidden from the Soviet media. From the end of 1948, the Soviet Union changed positions to support Arab concerns against Israeli interests through the end of the Cold War, and Israel began to emerge as a close Western ally.

During the last years of Stalin's rule, roughly 1948-1953, official Soviet anti-Zionism was intensified. While Stalin's campaigns were officially carried out under the banner of anti-Zionism, critics argue that they had a strong antisemitic content, often borrowed directly from traditional Russian antisemitism. This included a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans" and the fabrication of the Doctors' plot. After Stalin's death, anti-Zionism continued through the rise of "Zionology" in the 1960s and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public.

During the Cold War, the spectre of Zionism raised fears of internal dissent and opposition. The Soviet government liquidated almost all remaining Jewish organizations, and placed synagogues under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers. At the same time, the persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West. See Jackson-Vanik amendment.

In 1975, the Soviet Union sponsored the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, discussed below.

International anti-Zionism

Many of the most important authorities on ethics in the 20th century have contributed to the debate on Zionism, with some, such as Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s and '40s, expressing opposition to the Zionist movement. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall strongly opposed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 but lost the internal debate in the White House over formal U.S. support of Zionism.

In contrast Martin Luther King is said to have replied to a black student who criticized "Zionists" at a 1968 dinner, "Don't talk like that! When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism." (The accuracy of this quotation is debated, and it became the source of a serious hoax.)

Paralleling the rise of anti-Zionist sentiment in the west was increased hostility towards Israel at the international level. During the 1950s and 1960s Israel made great efforts to cultivate good relations with the newly independent states of Africa and Asia, and hostility to Israel was confined to the states of the Arab-Muslim world and the Communist bloc. A combination of inter-related circumstances in the 1970s radically changed this situation.

The first was the increased hostility to Israel following the onset of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the late 1960s. The second was the decline in the prestige of the United States following the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The third was increased economic power of the Arab oil-producing states in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the resulting energy crisis. The fourth was the rise of radical anti-western regimes in a series of African countries. The fifth was the increased diplomatic and economic presence of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba in Africa.

This anti-Zionist trend was manifested in organisations such as the Organization for African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, which passed resolutions condemning Zionism and equating it with racism and apartheid during the early 1970s. It culminated in the passing by the United Nations General Assembly of Resolution 3379 in November 1975, declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism." This resolution was passed by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions.

The 72 votes in favour consisted of 12 Communist countries (including East-Germany, Poland, Hungary, Byelorussia and the Ukraine), all 20 Arab states, another 12 Muslim-majority states (including Turkey), 14 non-Muslim African states, and 14 other states (including Brazil, India, Mexico and Portugal).

Those opposing included 5 African states (one of them Moslem), most of Latin-America and practically the entire English speaking world.

By 1991 this international situation had been reversed following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American-led victory over Iraq in the Gulf War and the return of the United States to global political and economic dominance.

On December 16, 1991, the General Assembly passed Resolution 4686, repealing resolution 3379, by a vote of 111 to 25, with 13 abstentions and 17 delegations absent. Thirteen out of the 19 Arab countries, including those engaged in negotiations with Israel, voted against the repeal, another six were absent. No Arab country voted for repeal. The PLO denounced the vote. All the ex-Communist countries and most of the African countries who had supported Resolution 3379 voted to repeal it. Only three non-Muslim countries voted against the resolution: Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. The rest abstained (including Turkey) or absented themselves.

International anti-Zionism, like domestic anti-Zionism in many countries, rises and falls in parallel with events in the Middle East, and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw some revival of anti-Zionism in some countries; however, it is also possible that it was not until this time that media attention focused on the phenomenon.

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

See also: antisemitism and New antisemitism

A large amount of debate revolves around the relationship between criticism of Israel, rejection of its right to exist and antisemitism. Zionists consider that rejection of Israel's right to exist, implied by anti-Zionism, is antisemitism. Criticism of Israel does not of itself make the critic an anti-Zionist as it is perfectly possible for a Zionist to criticize Israel.

Some commentators believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and attribute this to antisemitism. Critics of this view believe that associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is intended to stifle debate, deflect attention from valid criticisms, and taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies.

Thomas Friedman writes that “[c]riticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction—out of proportion to any other party in the Middle East—is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.”

As support and defense of Israel has become a focus of Jewish life since 1948, some see attacks on the existence of Israel as inherently antisemitic. For example, Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has argued: "If you advocate the abolition of Israel ... that means in fact that you're against the people who live there. If you are, for example, against the existence of Malaysia, you are anti-Malay. If you are against the existence of Israel, you are anti-Jewish."

The historian Walter Laqueur, writes at length about anti-Zionism being used as a “cover” for antisemitism.

On April 3, 2006, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced that anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism may often serve as camouflage for antisemitic bigotry on American college campuses.

Some scholars believe that while Anti-Zionism may not be inherently antisemitic, it very often either becomes antisemitism or is used to hide antisemitism.

Robert S. Wistrich argues that although several types of anti-Zionism are not intrinsically antisemitic, much of contemporary radical anti-Zionism has become a form of antisemitism.

Other scholars posit that anti-Zionism should remain distinct from antisemitism. Brian Klug, for example, writes that even when anti-Zionism is expressed in unfair and foul terms, it is not necessarily antisemitism.

In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in its working definition of antisemitism, identified several ways in which antisemitism can manifest itself, such as using double standards against Israel or drawing analogies between its behavior and that of the Nazis, while also stating that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”

In a criticism of this working definition, European Jews for a Just Peace, an organization of 18 European Jewish pro-Palestinian peace groups, contested several of its findings, and specifically targeted any inherent assumptions that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism.

Steven Zipperstein, professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University, argues that a belief in the State of Israel's responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict should be considered part of what reasonably informed decent people think. Zipperstein claims that disproportionate criticism of Israel is not the result of new antisemitism, or even classical antisemitism, but, although troubling, is a reflection of the extreme responses that mark a world society that has experienced September 11, and which has focused on the United States, and its ally Israel, as their main targets.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary controversy

In addition to a conventional definition of antisemitism ("hostility toward Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, political or economic discrimination"), the unabridged edition of Webster's Third New International Dictionary (2002), gives a controversial second and third definition to antisemitism, defining the word as "opposition to Zionism" and "sympathy for the opponents of Israel". (The modern college editions based on Webster's Third all omit the second definition of "antisemitism.") The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has mounted a campaign to get this definition removed. In a letter to Merriam-Webster, Hussein Ibish wrote that the second and third definition "smears and impugns the motives of all those who support the human and political rights of Palestinians"

A Merriam-Webster company spokesman defended the definition as "a relic" based on a handful of citations from about 1950 in which antisemitism was "linked more or less strongly with opposition to Israel or to Zionism." The spokesman also stated that the sense wasn't supported by current usage, and added that it would probably be dropped when the company publishes a new unabridged version in a decade or so. However, the company said it was beyond its means to send out correction sheets to all libraries.

Ken Jacobson, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Merriam-Webster to retain the definition. "Zionism is the national expression of the Jewish people," he told the New York Times, "and to deny that, it seems to me, most often reflects anti-Semitic views."

See also

Works related to Zionism at Wikisource

• Post-Zionism - Neo-Zionism
• Anti-globalization and antisemitism
• Israel and the apartheid analogy
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel